


A Different Path

by nickel710



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blackwatch Commander Morrison, Established Relationship, Jack has a dog, Lovers To Enemies, M/M, References to PTSD, Strike Commander Reyes, imagining how it would go down if Gabe had gotten the job
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-11-29 17:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 12,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11445204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickel710/pseuds/nickel710
Summary: Years after the fall of Overwatch, Soldier:76 and Reaper face each other down. Would it have ended differently for them if Gabriel had gotten that fateful promotion? A time-hopping look at what that path might have been like for Overwatch and our favorite grumpy old men.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Ohhh look my first Overwatch fic! Hope you enjoy, I do love these grumpy dads dearly. Planning this to be medium length, maybe 10-15 short chapters. Looking forward to the ride!

# Prologue

 

“Do you ever wonder how it would have gone down if I hadn’t gotten that promotion?”

It had started as just another mission, like always. Soldier:76 hadn’t expected Reaper to show up to this one, even though they had been spiraling around each other for more than a year now.

A while ago, he had been watching a thunderstorm when an old lesson from his childhood schooling about tornadoes came back to him. Cold, moist air converged with warmer air to feed into a spiraling cone of destruction. That was how he felt about this thing going on with Reaper, that they were two forces of nature that had collided in the worst possible way, and now they were spinning together out of control, decimating anything in their paths of mutual revenge.

Now he was just tired. They both were. Tornadoes had a short lifespan, after all, tiring themselves out after a few hours of raging, self-consuming chaos. Soldier:76 and Reaper had been spiraling each other for far longer than that.

The mission had gone sideways, as it always did when Reaper showed up. Soldier:76 had gotten separated from Ana, his partner on his crusade these days, and after a stalemate of a fight, he and his nemesis had collapsed against opposite walls, watching each other warily as they let their old, beaten bodies rest in an uneasy truce.

Reaper didn’t answer 76’s question, though, just continued to stare in what 76 assumed was his direction. Damn mask.

“What if it had been you?” 76 continued, rotating his aching shoulder to try to relieve an impending neck cramp. “Where would we be, now?”

“Who can say,” came the gravelly reply. “There’s no use speculating, Jack.”

76 huffed a mirthless laugh. “Don’t use that name, _Gabe_.”

76 could imagine Reaper wincing under the mask. “Point taken. Nostalgia is a bitch,” the other man said.

“So you never speculate about it, huh?” 76 asked after a minute, hating how much it hurt to think Reaper didn’t spend every other waking hour consumed by the need to know where it had gone wrong, _how_ it had gone wrong.

“It wouldn’t have changed anything,” snapped Reaper in his growling bass. “It was always going to end like this.”

Soldier:76 knew his cue, and was on his feet immediately, diving for cover as the first shotgun blast rang out. He took one second to squeeze his eyes shut and whisper, “Maybe not, Gabriel,” before switching his visor to thermal view and tracking down his opponent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments! I love reading and replying. How will it all go down? Was there a critical moment where crisis could have been averted, like 76 thinks, or was it fate, like Reaper thinks? YOU TELL ME! And then I will tell you my take in the upcoming chapters ;)


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the chapter titles are gonna be wack. I wish AO3 let authors mark a prologue as such so you wouldn't have put up with the "chapter 2: chapter 1" nonsense.

# Chapter 1

 

Jack paced nervously outside the boardroom, stuck outside with Ana, Reinhardt, and Torbjӧrn. The remnants of their team, waiting while their only other surviving member, their Strike Commander and Jack’s best friend, conferred with UN Under Secretary General Gabrielle Adawe.

“Would you hold still for five seconds, Morrison,” snapped Ana, who was leaning casually against Reinhardt’s tall, impossibly large frame. The man didn’t even seem to notice her weight pushing against him as he scrolled through some holovids on his personal phone.

“Sorry,” Jack muttered, ceasing his pacing to lean against the wall, arms folded. His foot started tapping.

“Holy hell, Jack,” Ana muttered. “Why are you so nervous?”

“I don’t know!” he clipped back, shoving off the wall to start pacing again. “Aren’t you? This meeting determines our whole goddamn future, Amari! And we’re stuck outside to what, pick our noses?”

“Maybe you, farm boy,” she said, a touch of sardonic amusement in her voice. “Some of us were raised better than that.”

He rolled his eyes. Since the end of the Omnic Crisis two weeks ago, Jack had been… jumpy, at best. The last few fights had been hard-won; the omnics had known they were close to losing the war and had thrown everything into the battles, unwilling to surrender without testing the limits of what they could do. Under Strike Commander Reyes, Overwatch had succeeded… at a considerable cost. Now, the fate of Overwatch lay in Gabe’s hands as he navigated the political scene single-handedly in that stupid conference room, locked inside for the third day in a row while his team waited to hear the decision.

Meanwhile, Jack felt like he was filled with some kind of seething, vibrating energy that made him sick to his stomach. Every distant sound made him jump, every stranger in the hallway dialed up his suspicion. He felt like a coil, wound too tight, close to snapping and releasing all of that potential energy _everywhere_.

“Calm down, my friend,” Reinhardt said, catching Jack by his collar as the blond man paced past him. Jack was a big guy, muscled beyond the human norm thanks to government experiments and super soldier serums. But Reinhardt made him feel like a child. “Commander Reyes has not failed us yet. Trust him.”

Trust him, sure. He could trust Gabe. He _did_ trust Gabe. What he didn’t trust was Adawe’s motives. Not too long ago she had approached Jack with the offer to lead Overwatch if the UN approved its ongoing existence. He had been appalled by the underhanded way the offer had been made, and had promptly refused, insisting Reyes was the man for the job. Adawe had tried to convince him to take the promotion, something about needing a face the public could trust, someone who built bridges, not destroyed them. Jack had just laughed. If she thought he was that guy, she was terribly mistaken. She had not been pleased that he had turned her down, calling him a lapdog and warning him that he was shooting his own career in the foot.

“Do you think I’m a good leader, Rein?” he asked abruptly. His teammates all stared at him, bemused by the question.

“Of course, Jack,” the older man replied. “Without you, I don’t know if the team would have held together so long.”

“Reyes might be the head of our little operation,” agreed Torbjӧrn, “but you’re the tendons and ligaments holding the rest of the body in place.”

“Right,” Jack muttered, frowning. Gabriel was the calculating one, the tactical genius who thought through every angle and possibility, conjuring up impossibly creative strategies to fight smarter and win better. Jack had known this about him since their days at the Soldier Enhancement Program, years back. He had watched the more senior soldier observe, plan, and outperform for a few months before coming to the conclusion that Gabriel was a man he trusted to follow into any battle. He had made it his project for the rest of their SEP days to make others come to the same conclusion.

It had worked. Gabriel had plenty of heart, but had a hard time showing it. Jack wheedled it out, exposed it, not just in Gabe, but in everyone around him. He opened his mouth and charismatic charm fell out without trying. Gabriel, savvy leader that he was, had taken advantage of this and made Jack his second-in-command, as well as the official spokesperson for Overwatch.

Perhaps it was his public presence that had made Adawe approach him. His stomach still churned at the thought, mostly because it had been _damn hard_ to turn down the offer. As he waited for Gabe to emerge, he had the sinking suspicion that he would be wondering until the day he died if he made the right call. Could he do better than Reyes leading Overwatch in this new era of peace?

The thought that this question would haunt him forever barely had time to echo in his mind before the doors opened and Gabriel Reyes himself emerged, smiling and still shaking hands with Under Secretary Adawe. Jack and the others snapped to attention.

“At ease, at ease,” Adawe said, waving her hand dismissively of the soldiers saluting her. The four of them fell to more comfortable stances, eyes searching for answers on Gabriel’s smiling face.

“Well, soldiers,” Adawe continued, clapping her hand on Gabe’s shoulder with a wide smile, “I’m very proud to introduce you to Strike Commander Gabriel Reyes, the inaugural leader of Overwatch’s new, permanent organization. I’ll let him tell you the rest, but for now….” She trailed off and offered her hand to Torbjӧrn, who was closest to her. The engineer shook it, looking a bit surprised, and then Adawe went down the line, shaking each of their hands.

Jack was the last in the line, and as she shook his, their eyes met, and he saw something vindictive glinting in her smile. Paranoia bubbled up inside; what had she done?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loooove your comments! Please leave some! What do you think? Will things go better for our edgy dads this time? Place your bets now!


	3. Chapter 2

# Chapter 2

“She fucking benched me!” Jack raged, his entire upper body tense with the desire to destroy something as he practically burned a hole in the ground with his furious pacing. “You _know_ I should be second-in-command, Gabe! You know it!”

“And you _are_ , technically,” replied the other man, who leaned on the counter of his personal kitchen and watched as Jack ranted.

“Technically! Not actually! This is an embarrassment! Ana, Rein, Torb—they _all_ get their own fucking strike teams! And I’m, what, your dancing monkey?”

“Well, only on our nights off—”

“ _Fuck_ you, Gabe, you know what I mean!”

Gabriel spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “What do you want me to say, Jack? I argued, she put her foot down, and I couldn’t budge her on the issue. She insisted that you be Press Secretary, I couldn’t change her mind.”

“Press Secretary,” groaned Jack, throwing himself onto the couch hard enough that the wood creaked.

“Don’t fucking break my couch because you don’t like your new title, jackass,” Gabe snapped.

“Press Secretary!” Jack yelled back. “I’m a _soldier_ Gabriel Reyes, not a fucking journalist!”

“And you’ve been doing a damn good job handling the press for Overwatch so far,” Gabe said, coming around the counter to sit in the chair across from where Jack now sulked dramatically on the couch. “I need someone like you to have my back and handle the public relations. You’re _good_ at this job, Jack.”

“There are a million people who could be good at this job,” he shot back. “She’s just angry because I—” he cut himself off but it was too late.

“Because you what?” Gabe prompted, eyes narrow.

“Nothing,” Jack said, and Gabe made a face. “Seriously, I think I just… I dunno, I think I pissed her off the other day because I didn’t scrape and bow to her like she wants everyone to. But whatever, it doesn’t matter. Why aren’t they making you handle the press?”

Gabe gave him a suspicious look but let it drop, accepting Jack’s change of subject. “We all know you’re the pretty one here, blondie.”

“You saying I got the position because of my rugged good looks?”

“Rugged,” Gabe scoffed, smiling. “You’re rugged in your dreams, babyface Morrison. But yeah, I’m saying that putting my scarred mug all over the news is a surefire way to get the public to hate us within a year.”

Jack sat up, cocking his head at Gabe. “I happen to be very fond of that scarred mug. Scars are sexy.”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Maybe there are some people who could look at _your_ face with these scars,” he began, gesturing at the gashes on his own cheek, “and think, ‘sexy.’ But we both know that for at least half of the world, and notably the half with the most money and influence, people would see me on TV and think ‘thug.’”

“Gabe—”

“No, stop. You know I’m right, don’t even try it. A big, physically imposing black guy, in a position of power, with scars on his face?” Gabe rolled his eyes. “At least half of America is already mad about it and they don’t even know I’m Strike Commander yet. Better to put your salt-of-the-earth, farmer charm on the frontlines of _that_ battle.”

They sat there in silence for a minute, then Jack sighed, forced a smile. “Well, Strike Commander,” he said, the smile growing more genuine as he watched one bloom on Gabriel’s face, “congratulations. Now that you’re the leader of an international, non-governmental military force, what are you going to do?”

Gabe leaned back, arms over the back of the chair, grinning now. “I can think of a few things,” he said slowly.

Jack stood up, walked around the coffee table between them, and lowered himself across Gabriel’s lap, straddling the other man’s hips. “Name one,” he whispered, leaning in and running his hands up Gabe’s exposed stomach.

“Top of my list of things to do,” Gabe replied, hands coming down to rest on Jack’s ass, pulling him in closer, “is my Press Secretary.”

Jack threw his head back and laughed. “Oh my god,” he said, covering his face with one hand, the other on Gabriel’s shoulder for balance. “You’re screwing your secretary. We’ve turned into a porn cliche, Gabe.”

Gabe pulled Jack in for a kiss, letting it linger for a moment before pulling back and meeting those bright blue eyes with his own, serious. “Hey,” he said quietly, “you know I fought for you, right?”

“Of course,” Jack said, taken aback by the shift in tone. He leaned forward, pressed a soft kiss to Gabe’s forehead. “Of course I know that.”

“As soon as I can, I’ll get you off of media duty, I promise.”

Jack ground his hips down into Gabriel’s lap, smiling at the surprised, sharp inhale he got in return. “But you had just started to make the gig sound fun, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dramatic Jack is my #1 Jack. Look at him, throwing himself around Gabe's apartment and repeating himself loudly to make his point. Aww.
> 
> Oh hey, new fandom so yall don't know this about me yet but I tend to update kinda fast! Usually 2-3 times a week but with chapters this short, who even knows. Hope you enjoy! Leave comments! I don't have a tumblr so this is where we can interact if you have thoughts, reactions, comments, etc. Your kudos are appreciated!


	4. Chapter 3

# Chapter 3

Jack made his way to the command center, a file folder full of reports in his hand—the few that Gabriel had to personally make a statement for. Most things, Jack handled himself, not bothering the Strike Commander with the minutia. There was trust there; trust that Jack would say the right thing, trust that Gabriel would have his back if something went sideways.

Following close at his heels was his best friend, Bean the German Shepherd. Jack had gotten her three years ago, not quite a year after the end of the Omnic Crisis. The conversation leading up to her adoption had gone something like this:

_“No, I am not getting a therapy dog,” Jack snapped._

_“Why not? You like dogs, and your therapist said it would be good for you,” Gabe pointed out._

_“I’m the face of an international military organization,” Jack answered. “People will think I’m crazy. They won’t trust me if they think I need a dog for emotional support.”_

_“So this is about your masculinity?” Ana asked, one eyebrow raised. “You need to look tough for the cameras?”_

_Jack rolled his eyes. “Essentially, yes! People have to trust me, and the easiest way to lose the public’s trust is to look incompetent.”_

_“And a therapy dog will make you look incompetent?” Ana needled. “Why?”_

_“It’s a sign of weakness!”_

_“It’s a sign of strength!” she shot back. “It’s a sign you know you need some fucking help, Jack! People who seek help are strong.”_

_“I don’t need—”_

_“Jack,” Gabe interrupted, massaging his temple wearily, “if you say ‘I don’t need help’ one more time, I swear to god. Should we look at the fucking calendar again?”_

_“The calendar” referred to Gabe’s phone app where he had started keeping track of the nights he had to wake Jack up from nightmares, and the days that Jack lost track of where he was and became convinced that they were on a mission and omnics were invading the Overwatch headquarters._

_“Besides,” Ana pressed their advantage as Jack glowered, “you can get a really cool therapy dog. Like... a German Shepherd. Those are tough and manly. Good for your ego.”_

And that was how Jack had gotten Bean.

Bean padded along behind Jack, content to go where he went, and Jack no longer even hesitated to tell anyone who asked how much he adored her. Her steadfast presence had been his saving grace many times over the years, and she had moreover become something of a celebrity, expected and asked after at press conferences and Command meetings alike.

Four years since the end of the war, and he was starting to feel like himself again.

Jack scanned himself and Bean into the command center, a dome-like room whose walls were covered entirely in HTVs (more than once, the misnomer ‘HTV’ had caused bickering spats between Ana, who argued for adopting the vernacular, though inaccurate, moniker, and Gabe, who was irritated by the ‘T’ of HTV since “tele-” was outdated and incorrect description of the tech). In a ring in the center were control panels and Gabe’s innermost circle of technicians and advisors, as well as the man himself.

Bean saw Gabriel and immediately trotted to him, the traitor, nudging her head under his hand for pets. He looked down at her with a smile before looking around for Jack. Jack waved when Gabe caught sight of him as he approached, scanning the screens on the wall for signs of current operations. Ana was in the field, deployed to Colombia to help clear out an old omnium, where a local gang had taken up residence and was threatening to use some of the abandoned tech there for profit. Jack caught sight of the Colombia tracker, but there was no sign of movement. He did the math and figured that due to the time difference, the team was resting and lying low at the moment.

God did he wish he was out there, at Ana’s back.

He glanced at the reports in his hand, and not for the first time, he had to clamp down hard on a bubbling anger in his gut. Ana and Reinhardt were in different cities every month, securing the peace that their team had fought so hard for during the Crisis, and he was here pushing papers and smiling for cameras.

“Something wrong, sunshine?” Gabriel asked, quiet enough for only Jack to hear. _Sunshine._ It was, privately, Jack’s favorite of the many nicknames Gabe used for him. Today it did little to lift his spirits, his eyes wandering back to the Colombia monitor unhappily.

“No,” he lied, forcing his gaze to Gabriel and smiling. “Just some reports I need your word on.”

He handed Gabriel the file, stroked his hand down Bean’s neck as his Commander flipped through the pages, reading. Bean sat on his feet. He smiled more genuinely down at her.

“All good,” Gabe said after a moment, snapping the file shut. “Do me a favor and focus on Dr. Ziegler’s acquisition when you go over the medical expansion. She’s popular with the Germans and god knows we need them to like us right now.” He gestured toward a screen showing a bombed out husk of a city. Eichenwalde. The Bastion units had decimated it during the Crisis, and several rogue turrets had yet to be disabled by Overwatch. A recent mission to do just that had gone south, resulting in the deaths of three Overwatch soldiers and two civilians.

“I could have done it,” Jack said quietly, eyes fixed on the smoldering ruins of the German city. “It should have been me out there, leading that team.”

Gabe frowned. “Jack,” he began, but Jack shook his head, cutting him off.

“No, _don’t_ just tell me again that Adawe blocked my promotion, I don’t care. It isn’t right. I’m one of the best strike leaders you have and I’m wasting away at an office desk thanks to a years old grudge, all because I wasn’t a yes man for her. It’s ridiculous.” Bean stood up, nudged at Jack’s hand, concerned by his rising voice. He didn't add what really riled him up about it… that he could have had Gabe’s job. That he had said no, loyally refused the position so that Gabe could have it. And it wasn't his fault, but _god_ it irritated Jack that Gabe didn't just defy Adawe’s instruction and promote him. It was the least he could do, really, to repay that loyalty. If only Jack could tell him. Instead, he said, "We both know it's bullshit."

Gabriel’s face darkened at Jack's tone. “Not here, Captain Morrison,” he said firmly. “We can talk about this later.”

Jack scowled and snatched the folder from Gabriel’s hands. “As you say, Commander,” he snapped. “I’ll just go sing a pretty song about Dr. Ziegler. Dance, monkey, dance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ana Amari reporting for duty, here for all your feminist needs. Jack just needs to be reminded sometimes that this is 2050 (or whatever *side eye at you, Blizzard, where's our timeline!*), not 1950!
> 
> Cooooommeeeeentssss? Concerns? Questions? KUDOS? (I love them! They help, especially since I don't have a tumblr to self-promote! Please leave some if you're enjoying!) :D :D :D
> 
> If the fic's timeline gets confusing (time jumps are going to be several years at a time for the most part from here out), let me know. I can try to remember to include some kind of time stamp in the chapter summaries.


	5. Chapter 4

# Chapter 4

A month after Adawe left the UN, Gabriel called Jack to his office. Swamped with work about the Under Secretary’s resignation, Jack had been irritated by the summons—didn’t Gabe know that the overturn at the UN had made his Press Secretary duties ten times harder?

He whistled for Bean to follow him as he closed up his office and made his way to the Strike Commander’s office, which was not too far from the command center. They stopped halfway to Gabe’s office when Jack caught sight of Ana heading down a parallel corridor and called out to her. She looked over just in time to see Jack tell Bean she could greet Ana, and prepared herself for the incoming dog missile.

Jack wasn’t far behind, pulling her into a bear hug as Bean whined for attention. “You’re back! How did the end of the Lebanon mission go?”

Ana squeezed him one more time before letting him go and stepping back, her hand resting amiably on his arm. “Well, not as bad as it should have,” she sighed, shrugging. “We extracted the scientists without any casualties, no thanks to Strike Leader Grant. Useless coward,” she spat. “I wish it had been you on the ground out there, Jackie. I miss working with competent ground squads.”

Jack smiled bitterly. “That makes two of us, Annie.” She sighed again and patted his arm.

“I know. Listen, I want to chat but I haven’t seen Fareeha yet. Let’s have dinner tomorrow?” she suggested. Jack nodded and they parted ways after Bean got one last pat on the head.

At Gabe’s office at last, Jack paused to gather himself before knocking. Things had been… strained with Gabriel lately. He was more stressed, under more pressure politically after the mess at Adawe’s office had been uncovered. Luckily most of the spatter had missed Overwatch, but everything the woman had overseen was under careful scrutiny right now. Overwatch’s failures at Eichenwalde and Chicago had been a thorn in Gabriel’s side for the last four weeks, and of course that meant Jack was the one tackling all the negative press about it. 

He ached for some time with Gabe that wasn’t all about Overwatch. He almost missed the days of the Crisis, when they had shared a single mission and there was room for nothing but their hyperfocus on the team, the omnics, and comforting each other through cold nights.

Bean got bored and laid down at his feet. Jack huffed a little laugh, interpreting her action to mean she had grown tired of his retrospective melancholy, and knocked.

“Come in!” Gabe yelled. Jack opened the door and Bean bounded into the office to Gabe’s side, licking at his hands as he greeted her.

“What’s up?” Jack asked. “I’ve got like eighteen reporters breathing down my neck for additional comments on Chicago, if that’s what—”

“That’s not why you’re here,” Gabe interrupted, gesturing for Jack to have a seat. Christ but it was strange to sit across the desk from him like their relationship was strictly professional. Every time Jack had done this, it had rankled a little. Across that desk was the man with whom Jack shared a bed, whose cock he sucked, whose innermost secrets were his to share. Yet it was difficult to feel like partners, equals, with the expanse of glass between them.

“Something else to handle?” Jack asked wearily.

“Yes, but not how you think,” Gabe answered, smiling slyly. “There’s going to be a new division in Overwatch, and I need a commander for it.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Ana might be looking for a command job. I’m sure she’d like to be here more permanently for Fareeha.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Ana.”

“Winston? He’s happier working alongside Angela, you know he doesn’t want command duties.”

“Not Winston, jackass. _You_.”

Jack felt a jolt of excitement shoot through his veins. “What?”

Gabe was grinning. “I’d have had you in the field years ago if Adawe hadn’t been breathing down my neck about keeping you in front of the cameras,” he said. “She’s gone. You’re up.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Now Jack started to grin, too. “What’s the new division?”

Gabriel’s grin tightened a bit. “It’s called Blackwatch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your comments are welcome and appreciated! Thanks for reading so far :D


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A two-fer day! Last chapter was kind of short and slow, and this chapter is kinda long and fast, so I thought maybe I should just get them out there together. Enjoy!

# Chapter 5

“Get your head _down_ Jesse, for fuck’s sake!” Jack screamed as McCree drew fire from the sniper again.

This was supposed to be a covert operation, and they had been caught in sniper fire. How the hell had the enemy set up snipers? They shouldn’t have had a clue Jack and his team were even coming!

Shit, shit, shit! Jack lunged across the distance to grab McCree and haul him down with him, holding the other man under cover as another sniper shot slammed into the concrete where Jack had been two seconds ago. Was this how Gabe had felt when Jack had been the cocksure rookie on missions, endangering his whole team because he had been hot-headed and haphazard? He owed him an apology; it could only have been worse for Gabe, since Jack was not in love with McCree.

Still loved the kid, though. Just, different.

“Omen,” Jack snapped into his comms, using Genji’s codename. No real names were used in any kind of electronic or digital medium for Blackwatch operatives. That Jack had used Jesse’s real name earlier in the heat of the moment was a sign of just how out of hand the situation had gotten.

“Here, boss.”

“We need that sniper taken down yesterday, can you find them?”

“On it. Omen out.”

Jack turned his attention to Jesse. “We gotta move, they know our position. It won’t be long before they’re on us. Got that smoke bomb still?”

The young man fished in a pouch on his utility belt and produced the bomb. Jack nodded, equipping his mask and visor that would help him see and breathe in the impending cloud of smoke, then took the bomb from Jesse as he did the same. When he was sure neither of them would suffocate, he pulled the pin and lobbed the bomb into the path between their current cover and the empty school building to their backs. Immediately the area began filling with smoke.

“Omen, the sniper will be on the move,” Jack told Genji, guessing that the sniper would have to look for a new vantage point to cover the school. It was obvious enough that he and McCree were headed to the school, given where the smoke coverage came from, but they’d still be safer there than as sitting ducks in the open street.

“Copy, boss.”

Once inside the building, Jack replaced his mask to his utility belt but kept the visor. Better vision in the dark with the thing than without it. “Let’s move,” he growled.

Was there a way to save this mission? Probably not. The goal had been to go undetected, but the snipers in place clearly indicated that had never been in the cards. Two shots had taken out Park and Olande before Jack had even registered that a sniper was firing on them. Two of the six agents on the mission, dead. What a nightmare. Their bodies would be evidence of Blackwatch’s involvement, though none outside of Gabriel’s innermost circle even knew about Blackwatch’s existence. This was the first mission Jack had lost agents on, though, and when their military uniforms and weaponry were discovered, people would be asking questions.

The rest of the mission had been an assassination strike to take out the top three leaders in a human trafficking ring. There hadn’t been enough hard evidence for the police to pin the crimes on them, but Gabriel had ordered the strike after a series of kidnappings in Malaysia had been tied to the organization. Take out the leaders, watch the rest of the organization recoil and work to get back on its feet. Mistakes would be made in the aftermath, and that’s when the police would be able to shut the ring down for good.

“Omen to Miles,” cracked Genji’s voice on Jack’s comms.

“Miles here,” Jack said as quietly as he could, peering down a hallway to make sure they weren’t about to walk into a trap before gesturing for McCree to follow him. “Report.”

“Sniper is dead,” Genji said, his words earning a relieved sound from both Jack and McCree. “Tracked her position from her abandoned nest. No sign of others.”

“Copy that, Omen.”

“Boss, I think I can get in from her perch to take out the ring leaders,” Genji said. Jack froze. Fuck. Shit. What was the right call? Risk Genji’s life to complete the mission? Call the mission off and retreat with the four still-breathing members of the team? And beyond that, would the messiness created by the sniper mean that following through with the assassinations would actually make things worse for Overwatch at this point? God. How had Gabriel done this all the time during the war?

He looked up to see McCree’s wide eyes on him, and he bit back a groan. Kid was depending on him. “Go ahead, Omen. Carefully. Meet me, Ranger, and Figment at the checkpoint in fifteen.”

“Copy, boss. Omen out.”

Jack closed his eyes for a second, hoping against hope that he hadn’t just sent Genji to his death (if he had, Angela would kill him, if he didn’t kill himself first—god when had he started thinking that way?). When he opened them, he clapped McCree on the shoulder and nodded. “Let’s get to that checkpoint.”

They were almost clear of the school building when they crashed headlong into the enemy. Five of them, carrying automatic rifles and wearing body armor. Jack turned his run into a charge and took the first one down before they had registered his and McCree’s presence, tackling the man to the ground and blasting his face at close range. No surviving that.

Behind him he heard McCree’s signature gunshots, rapidly fired and, he could personally attest, accurately aimed. Jack shot to his feet and caught the next enemy fighter by surprise with a powerful snap kick, driving the woman back into the person behind her.

“Ranger!” Jack yelled, ducking.

McCree’s pistol sang; both bodies dropped.

Five down. The kid was a good shot, and even shaping into a good agent despite rough beginnings.

“You good?” he called to McCree, making sure all of the enemy combatants were permanently out of the fight. No pulse on any of the bodies.

“Right as rain, boss.”

At the checkpoint, they rendezvoused with Fuentes, code name Figment. She had been injured in the immediate fallout of the first two sniper shots, clipped by a third bullet and sent back to wait for Jack and the others to join up with her.

“Omen?” she asked.

“On his way,” Jack said nervously. They hadn’t heard from Genji. Had he sent the boy to his death? He checked his watch; they had used eleven of the fifteen given moments.

When fifteen hit, if Genji wasn’t there… did Jack call it? Did they leave? Christ he hated this.

At fourteen minutes, his comms crackled to life. “Omen to Miles.” Jack sagged in relief.

“Miles here, go ahead Omen.”

“Two minutes from the checkpoint. Don’t leave me behind, boss.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack said, wishing the words were true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Miles" (MEE-less) means "soldier" in Latin.
> 
> McCree!!!! And Genji!! Wooo. Thoughts? Predictions? Concerns? Comments more generally? <3 :D


	7. Chapter 6

# Chapter 6

Six years into the Blackwatch Commander gig, and Jack had never felt more adrift. The mission had been successful, but he wasn’t sure that was a good thing anymore, because with every successful kidnapping, assassination, politically motivated strike, and shady truce, Blackwatch became an increasingly horrifying stain on Overwatch’s good reputation.

Not that anyone knew. But how long before they were exposed?

The plane landed and his team dispersed, weary from the mission. There was not much of the usual chatter and banter among everyone. It had not been a pleasant five days in the Sahara Desert, and more than anything his band of misfits and oddities just wanted their beds.

He tried to summon some encouraging words—a feat that had always been so easy and natural to him in the past—before everyone left, but the best he could do was an exhausted “good work out there.” His heart wasn’t in it, and he knew that his team could tell.

He drove himself to the house where he spent most of his nights here in Switzerland. He had his own apartment, sure, but he and Gabriel had chosen this house together, to live in together. Jack’s own apartment was for show, an address to put on forms so that the worst kept secret of Overwatch would not have to be acknowledged by anyone in an official capacity. (Sometimes, more frequently in the past six months than ever before, it was an escape for when he and Gabriel couldn’t get past a bad fight.)

Three in the morning. He parked his car in the garage and sat there for a minute, wondering which he dreaded more: sitting here alone in the garage, or going inside?

At least Bean was here. He grabbed his go-bag from the backseat and trudged into the house. Bean was at the door to greet him. She was ten years old now, which meant it had been eleven years since the end of the Omnic Crisis. Christ. He felt ancient, weighed down.

Jack made his way to the shower. He never could sleep in his own house after a mission until he had purged the last of the smell of adrenaline, gunfire, and sweat from his body. In the field, sleep was easier to come by no matter what; the body was exhausted, took the chances it was given. At home, if he so much as caught a whiff of soldier smell, he was awake, alert, aggro.

Gabriel stirred when Jack climbed into bed next to him. He must have awoken while Jack had been showering because it didn’t take long for him to be alert enough to reach over, caress Jack’s shoulder.

“Welcome home,” he whispered, voice rough with sleep. “Bean missed you.”

“Just Bean?”

Gabriel smiled sleepily. “I missed you, too.”

Jack sighed, heart aching for when this thing between them had been easy. It wasn’t easy anymore, but sometimes in the dead of night, when they were both too tired to fight, he remembered how it had been.

He turned toward his lover, nestled closer. Gabe pulled him in, stroking his hand down the side of Jack’s face. “Tough one?” he whispered. Jack nodded. Gabe pressed a kiss to his forehead, rubbed at his back. “Want to talk about it?”

“No,” Jack said, closing his eyes and trying to lose himself in the feeling of Gabe’s gentle hands on his body. “I don’t even want to think about it. Talk to me about something, anything?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno. Tell me a story about your abuelita or something.”

Gabe kissed him again, and obliged, lips moving against Jack's forehead as he spoke. “Did I tell you about the time she caught me and Marisol looking up and practicing curse words? I was like… six years old.” Jack chuckled. He’d met Gabriel’s older sister a few times now, and could just imagine her helping a little baby Gabe learn to say ‘fuck.’

“No.”

Gabe proceeded to regale him with the tale of his grandmother discovering her wayward grandchildren on her computer, cursing like sailors. Their parents and been called, soap had been administered to mouths, and the icing on the cake had been when Marisol, in her anger at being caught and punished, actually cursed _at_ their abuelita. Gabe laughed through telling Jack how his grandmother’s fury, when burning hot, was a thing to be feared. But that day, he had seen that fury go ice cold.

“Marisol was never the same after that,” Gabe said jokingly. “And I learned never to curse around Abuela.”

Jack was laughing, too, and it felt so much like old times that he could feel his body responding, waking up in ways it hadn’t in a long time. He pressed a long kiss into Gabe’s neck, shifting so that his leg could hook over Gabriel’s hip and pull him closer.

Gabriel’s breath caught as Jack worked his lips into sensitive skin under his ear. “Aren’t you tired, sunshine?”

“There’s time to sleep later, corazón.”

Later, as they lay spent and languorous, the smell of sex heavy in the air, Jack marked the moment when the giddy rush of intimacy was chased back by infringing thoughts about the uncertainty of their future.

“Are we going to make it, Gabe?” he asked, wishing he still thought the term “heartbreak” was a metaphor.

“Hm? What do you mean?”

“You and me. Are _we_ going to survive Overwatch?”

Their gazes met in the dark, and in the slight crease of Gabriel’s brow, the worried wideness to his eyes, Jack saw his own fear reflected back at him. Neither could summon the courage to say what they were both thinking, so they clung to each other instead, letting the circle of their embrace hold the dubious future at bay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I want so much more r76 fluff. But I can't stop the angst, friends. I can't. Stop. The. Angst.
> 
> Do you have r76 fluffy fics you love and would like to recommend to yours truly? AUs or canon universe equally accepted! I have read a lot of the most popular ones that think through the SEP/pre-Omnic Crisis/pre-OW Fall days, which have their fair share of angst because, well, the canon story pretty clearly points to some huge dramatic fall out that literally ends with explosions and death, so. But sometimes I just want these characters in happy, and/or funny, and/or pleasant situations without needing to dig in to the end-game stuff.
> 
> Sigh. Maybe that's what I'll do next. Create the content you want to see, etc. etc.
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you recommend something for me, thanks in advance! I love comments, please consider leaving one! <3


	8. Chapter 7

# Chapter 7

Jack woke up, heard what sounded like a very angry Gabriel yelling at a very defensive McCree, followed by an explosion of fury from Angela, and then he fell unconscious again.

 

Jack woke up again and saw some bright lights, feel a sharp stabbing pain in his side and legs, and then Angela’s astounded, terrified face. She yelled something. There was some scrambling, and then a feeling of weightlessness. He lost his grip on consciousness.

 

Jack thought he heard Ana reading to him.

 

Jack realized it was a dream too late, he was already covered in so much blood, they were under fire from every direction. Around him, members of all the teams he had ever been on lay bleeding out or already dead, and he was holding his own entrails in place as he tried to find a way out.

The way out was to be awake.

He clawed at that sensation. Wakefulness was the surface of the ocean and the dream was the storming waves that kept sucking him under and away.

Bean ended up being the lifeboat. She had been asleep beside him, apparently, and woke at her master’s fitful stirring. She licked his face, whined, nudged at him. Finally, Jack came to enough to cling to her, digging his fingers into her full, thick coat, grounding himself in the familiar feel of her coarse hair and warm puppy kisses.

Well, puppy no more; old girl was twelve years now. Slower than she had been, gray in her muzzle. Of course, the very best veterinary care and advances in medical sciences meant that unlike her ancestors, she could be expected to live another three or four years. Still, Jack’s heart always clenched at the arthritic way she pushed herself to her feet these days.

He tried to sit up, gain his bearings, but lancing pain in his torso put a stop to that. Instead, he pushed Bean’s face out of his own and looked around. Hospital bay at OHQ? How had he gotten here? Hadn’t he been on a mission in Greece?

On cue, Angela appeared in his field of vision. She looked relieved. “Jack! It’s good to see you awake.”

She glanced over her shoulder, and Jack wondered if they were alone. He couldn’t sit up to look around, but it didn’t really matter because he also couldn’t focus on one train of thought long enough to remember why he needed to look around.

“Angela?” he said, blinking up at her. She smiled. “What happened?”

“Your mission went bad, Jack,” she said. “You got beat up pretty bad.” She laid her hand on his shoulder. “But don’t worry, I’m here. You’re on your way to a full recovery.”

Jack looked around, noticed a few IV lines hooked into his arm. “What’re these, doc?” he asked, shaking the arm in Angela’s direction.

“Saline and morphine,” she answered.

“Morphine?” he repeated, surprised. He chuckled. No wonder he was so fuzzy. “How high of a dose are you giving me? I can’t remember the last time painkillers worked.”

She looked over her shoulder again, and he wondered if he’d said something wrong when she returned a worried gaze to him. “You get some sleep, now, Jack. Focus on getting better.”

He caught her hand, smiled at her. “You’re an angel, Angela. Mercy incarnate, walking the Earth.”

She looked amused as she patted his hand into place and smoothed his brow. “We’ll see if you feel that way next time you wake up,” he thought he heard her say sadly as he drifted back to sleep.

 

Sitting in a wheelchair, one hand clutching his IV trolley and the other buried in Bean’s thick mane, Jack looked at himself in the mirror and took stock. Concussion, miraculously his first despite everything he’d gone through in his life. Some new scarring on his shoulder from where he’d caught some lucky shrapnel in the crease between the kevlar pads of his armor. Bandages still covered where his ribs had been crushed, but he didn’t need to see the injury to feel it. Even through the constant morphine drip, the healing bones grated against his overblown muscles, vying for space inside Jack’s enhanced flesh.

He forced his eyes lower, to where they did not want to go. White bandages, neatly tied off around the nubs where his legs had been before.

He didn’t even remember what had happened. Jesse had been by, told him they had encountered a rogue Titan under control of one of those Anubis units that still wanted to end humanity. Blackwatch wasn’t designed for taking out omnics; their prey had always been the more traditional flesh-and-blood kind. They had been in Greece for other purposes, seeking out an island base where a submarine smuggling ring had been basing its black market arms trade. And then, Titan, bent on murdering everything.

Jack had taken down Titans before. He knew how to fight this evil. He radioed to Command, then organized his team. In the end, his Blackwatch team lost six out of its nine members, but civilian deaths had been kept to just thirteen. And Jack had been crushed by the Titan’s hand as it had fallen, because he had played hero and rushed in to drag Genji to safety. One finger had landed on his chest, crushing his ribs through his body armor and muscles, and the rest of the hand had smashed his lower legs into pancakes.

Gabriel found him, staring at the reflection of his legs. Or where they should have been.

“Angela will give you new legs,” he said, pulling Jack’s attention. “She gave Genji a whole new body.”

“I know. I’ll get used to it. I mean, it sucks, but I trust Angie to give me the best new legs possible.”

“So is there something else on your mind? Why the long face if not the legs?”

Jack leaned his head into his hand, his elbow propped on the arm of the wheelchair, eyes on his own face in the mirror. “Because this is the first time I’ve felt like I did the right thing since you put me in charge of Blackwatch, and taking out that Titan wasn’t even our mission.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack's cyborg skin makes me think maybe the big boots on his main skin are actually prostheses and he lost his legs (maybe in the fire/bombing?). Thoughts?
> 
> OHQ = Overwatch Headquarters
> 
> Also I think Overwatch would be an early adopter of teleportation technology, which we know exists in the canon timeline with Symmetra's ult. Perhaps their science division was even behind it development? Anyway for this chapter, Jack got back to OHQ so fast via one of the earliest uses of teleportation, which Gabriel cleared upon McCree reporting back about Jack's injuries.
> 
> As always, your comments are appreciated!


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content includes some mildly ableist language.

# Chapter 8

“Why aren’t you listening to me?” Jack all but screamed, throwing his holopad onto the conference table hard enough that the clash of metal on glass made Gabriel jump.

“I _am_ listening to you, Jack! You’re just not making any sense!”

“So you don’t believe me?”

Gabe worked his mouth, trying to think of a diplomatic reply.

“Don’t bother,” Jack scoffed, “you never were good with words. You don’t believe me.”

“Jack… it’s just—”

“It’s what, Gabe? Please, tell me again how this is just my paranoia. You think I’m crazy? Can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy?”

The silence from Gabriel was all Jack needed. He reached down to burrow his fingers into Bean’s comforting presence but of course, there was no Bean to reach for. Gone almost a year now, and he still forgot sometimes. Christ. Maybe Gabriel was right.

“I’m not imagining this, Gabe,” he said, quieter now. “If you ignore me about this, you’re a fool.”

“Jack, when was the last time you got a full night’s sleep?” Gabe asked, collapsing into his chair and covering his face with a hand.

“My sleeping patterns have nothing to do with—”

“And what about the pain pills, huh? Do those have anything to do with this?”

Jack reeled like he had been slapped. “Excuse me?”

“It’s been two years since you lost your legs, Jack, and you’re still dosing yourself with that shit. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Angela, too.”

“And when was the last time you lost two limbs after being crushed by a Titan, Commander Reyes? Or are you also an expert on issues related to cybernetic body parts and I wasn’t aware?”

“Genji doesn’t need constant painkillers,” Gabriel snapped.

“I’m not Genji! And why are we even talking about this? We’re supposed to be talking about the fact that someone is clearly leaking details about Blackwatch ops to our targets!”

“Proof, Jack! I need proof!”

“When did you stop trusting my word as all the proof you needed?” Jack demanded.

The silence that fell was too much, the chasm too wide now.

“Gabriel. When. Did you stop. Trusting me.”

“I do trust you, Jack,” he said.

Jack snorted. “Bullshit.”

Gabe leaned forward over the table, head thunking onto the glass top. A weary sigh escaped his lips. “Don’t. Don’t do this.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Commander. What is it I’m doing, exactly? Telling you that the entire future of Overwatch is at stake because there’s a traitor in Blackwatch? Or trying to figure out exactly when you and I stopped being a team?”

Gabriel finally snapped, temper flaring to life as he stood up, pointing an accusatory finger in Jack’s direction. “This is what I mean about you being paranoid, Jack! Listen to yourself for one goddamn minute! A traitor, because a few missions haven’t gone according to your plans? Doubting that I have always and will always have your back? You sound—” he cut off.

Jack snarled triumphantly, but this was one fight he didn’t feel good about winning beyond vindication. “Say it. I know it’s what you think. Just fucking say it Gabe. I sound what, exactly?”

“Crazy! You jackass! You sound fucking crazy! Jesus H. Christ, Jack, take a fucking vacation, would you? Go visit your mom in Indiana, she hasn’t seen you in years.”

“I don’t want to—”

“I wasn’t asking, Commander Morrison.”

Jack blinked. He sat. “What?”

“Two months mandatory leave. McCree will have temporary command of Blackwatch. We’ll reassess your position here when you return.”

In their bitter attempts to hang on to their relationship, they’d been strangling it for years now. It was like rock climbing, but with fewer and fewer handholds, and the cliff face was eroding at an ever increasing rate around them. 

But there was no recovering from this. Jack didn’t _want_ to recover from this. He let go.

Jack turned to leave the room, then paused and looked back at Gabe. “You know why Adawe was so insistent I should be Press Secretary, Gabe? All those years ago, she came to me behind your back and offered me the Strike Commander position.” Gabe’s shock was evident, and Jack was aiming to hurt, now. “You were second choice, _sir_. Second best to your protegé. And I said no. I fucking turned her down, for you, and she didn’t like that, so she made sure I got a position I’d hate. I hope that keeps you up tonight, Strike Commander.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dramaaaa
> 
> comments?


	10. Chapter 9

# Chapter 9

At six in the morning, Jack woke up like he had every other day of his “leave,” which was now about halfway completed. He stretched, strapped on his sneakers, and set off for his standard sunrise run.

Ten miles into his run and he was in town. Today his feet had carried him to the new high school building, just four years old now. John ‘Jack’ Morrison High School. Overwatch blue and white for spirit colors. Gorilla mascot (how insulting, Winston wasn’t a _mascot_ ).

He stood outside the school, stretching his legs and looking forlornly at the building named in his honor. School was out for the summer, so the building was empty. He checked his watch. 7:00. His brother had been up when he had left, as usual, but now his sister-in-law and nieces were probably awake, too. It would take another hour to get back to the farm. If he started now, he might make it in time for breakfast.

“Jack? Jack Morrison, is that you?”

He turned instinctively at the sound of his name and blinked at a phantom from his past. Carly Flores, his first (and only) girlfriend and high school prom date.

“Oh my god,” she said, staring at him with huge eyes, one hand on her chest and the other resting on the handle of a stroller with twins strapped in under a sun cover. “It’s one thing to see you on TV like this, but, holy shit. You’re a giant.”

He chuckled a bit. “Hi, Carly,” he said. “Long time no see.”

She shook her head. “I heard you were back in town, but I didn’t believe it. What are you doing here?”

“Messy divorce,” he half-joked, surprising himself. “Needed some time.”

She frowned. “I didn’t know you were married.”

“Well, never did the ceremony, but almost twenty years with one person means something, right?”

Her face softened. “I’m sorry, Jack.”

“Me, too.”

They decided to grab coffee, Carly insisting it was fine that he was sweaty from his run. They settled in at a nearby Starbucks, Jack drawing wide-eyed stares from the young employees who probably attended the school named after him, and the patrons as well.

Not long after they had settled in, word had apparently gotten out that Jack, who had been so elusive for the past month, was settled into the local Starbucks with Carly Ruskin (Flores no longer, she had married her college boyfriend before taking over her mother’s bakery in town). The place filled with people all craning their necks to get an eyeful of Jack Morrison.

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Carly sighed. “I didn’t even think—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said, smiling wearily. He sipped at his cold brew, thinking about Gabe’s homemade cappuccinos whose rich aroma had greeted him on so many cozy mornings in Geneva. “I guess I can’t hide from this forever.”

Carly opened her mouth to answer, but just then her cell phone buzzed. “It’s Jim,” she said apologetically, meaning her husband, and answered. “Hi, honey. Yeah, I am, I ran into him at—what? No? What are you—what? Really? Okay. Okay. Bye.”

Jack raised an eyebrow at the way she hesitantly, almost fearfully returned her gaze to him.

“Have you seen the news?” she asked quietly.

“The news? No, I’ve been ignoring it. Why?”

“It’s… it’s Overwatch. Jack… what is Blackwatch?”

Jack’s heart leapt into his throat. “What did you say?”

“Jim said something called Blackwatch is all over the news. Something about… an Overwatch secret police? Killing political dissenters and assassinating diplomats?”

Holy shit.

All around them, the nature of the looks and stares seemed to change. Whether it was Jack’s imagination or something else, every set of eyes on him was accusatory, laying blame at his feet for hundreds of crimes against humanity thinly veiled behind promises of peacekeeping and necessary, calculated evils.

Someone had leaked Blackwatch.

He ran the ten miles back to the farmhouse in less than an hour, a pace that should have been unsustainable but that felt entirely too slow nevertheless.

“Jack!” his brother yelled as he burst into the house. “Have you—”

“I know!” Jack yelled, charging up the stairs to find his phone, which had been switched off the entire time he had been home so far.

As soon as it powered on, it was ringing. Ana.

“Jack,” she said, relieved. “Get out of there!”

“What?”

“Gabriel thinks it was you. Write down this phone number and contact me when you’re somewhere safe.” She rattled off a phone number which he hastily scrawled on a nearby pad of paper.

“Gabriel thinks it was me?” he repeated when she had finished. He couldn’t quite figure out what she meant.

“It wasn’t, was it?” she asked quietly.

“Wha—of course not!”

“I know. I had to ask, I’m sorry.”

The full weight of what was happening started to sink in. Gabriel thought Jack had… how? How could he think that? Did he really think Jack was that petty, that vindictive? Christ. He was going to hang for this. Oh, no, no, Ana was, too, if they caught her talking to him. “Why are you helping me? You’ll get court martialed.”

“We all need someone we can trust, Jack. Now go!”

He snapped his phone in half, pulling out the data card and grinding it under his heel. Then he grabbed the go-bag from the closet and ran down the stairs. His mother, brother, sister-in-law, and nieces were gathered, staring at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

He swallowed hard. “Whatever they say about me, don’t believe them,” he murmured, and it sounded more like pleading than he wanted. He held his brother’s eyes, bright blue mirrored on a more natural face with no scars and fewer lines. “Cooperate with them, don’t make it hard on yourselves. I’m gonna take your car. Report it stolen and they’ll recover it later today.”

Jack looked from his brother to his mother. “Don’t believe what they say, Ma,” he said. “I’m not a traitor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should be two more chapters now! And an epilogue. :D
> 
> comments?


	11. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of the chapter was messed up a bit. I think I've fixed it, but if you read *immediately* after I posted, then you might want to go back and read the beginning again since somehow a paragraph or two ended up missing.

# Chapter 10

## Overwatch Founder and Captain Ana Amari Dead at 43

Jack read it seven more times before he believed it was possible. Ana, gone. The article said she had been on a mission when an enemy sniper had taken out two of her ground agents before Ana had found the sniper, only to be killed herself.

Under the fold was another story, related:

## Blackwatch Commander Jack Morrison Still at Large

And then a picture of his face with the caption, “Morrison, wanted for espionage and terrorism charges, leaked crucial details that could have compromised Captain Amari’s mission.”

He growled and threw the paper away. They wanted to blame him for Ana’s death, too? Ana. Oh, fuck—Fareeha. Fareeha.

He didn’t really think about it, just dialed Ana’s old phone number. The one he would have used months ago, before he was a fugitive. 

“Hello? Who is this?”

Jack’s heart clenched. “Gabriel?” he asked, voice so quiet he wasn’t sure if his phone’s mic would pick it up.

“Jack? Is that you?”

“Yeah.”

A long silence.

“You started the trace on the call yet?” Jack asked sadly.

“No,” Gabriel answered.

Jack snorted his disbelief. “Is Fareeha okay?”

A pause. “If you really cared about her you’d have turned yourself in months ago.”

Jack curled up on his hotel bed, throat so tight he couldn’t respond. Just Gabriel’s voice… it was too much and it wasn’t enough. He took a gasping breath, trying not to sob outright, and said, “How can you think I did this? How?”

“Don’t,” Gabriel said, pained. “Don’t deny it. The timing, the information that was leaked… it could only have been you, Jack.”

“Not if there was a traitor on the inside the whole time, like I told you years ago,” Jack said, wishing he sounded more angry, more righteous. Instead, he just felt alone. Ana, dead.

“Yeah, I guess there was a traitor the whole time.” Gabe scoffed a little laugh. “And you thought I stopped trusting you. If only I _had_ , since apparently you didn’t deserve it.”

Gabe’s words didn’t sting the way Jack expected them to. It was too exhausting to let them sting, when he’d already been obsessing over the _idea_ of Gabriel thinking those things for months now. The verbal confirmation was almost relieving. He didn’t have to wonder anymore what exactly Gabriel thought. Alone. Even Jesse and Genji had disappeared from his life, unable or unwilling to contact him, vanished from any Overwatch Watch Points immediately after the news broke about Blackwatch. At least they were safe, or so he hoped.

“I miss you,” Jack said, unable to sustain any emotion besides just empty sadness. “I want to come home.”

“Then come home, Jack,” Gabe said, voice choked.

“No. You don’t believe me,” Jack answered. “I’m not a traitor. I never leaked information to the press.”

“Then why haven’t we found anyone else who could possibly have done it?” Gabe asked wearily. “If it wasn’t you, then who?”

That very question had been consuming Jack for months now. Who had leaked Blackwatch? Who had set him up? Someone had waited, watched from the shadows, collected information for years from an insider position, and finally, when the crack that had been growing between Jack and Gabe had at last been sundered, _then_ they had struck. It felt strangely personal.

Alone in the world, no Ana to watch his back anymore, no Gabe to go home to. Well, _fuck_ this. He had lost everything, and the only thing within his reach was to clear his own name. He didn’t mind if he died, but he wanted to be remembered as a hero, not as a traitor.

“When I find out, I’ll tell you,” he promised Gabriel, sitting up.

“Jack—”

“See you soon, Gabe,” Jack said. He stood up, tossed the phone onto the tile floor in the bathroom, and crushed it under his heel. Walking to the closet, he found his mask and visor, clicked them into place, and wrapped himself in the plain brown leather jacket he’d bought secondhand at a garage sale.

He looked himself over in the mirror and huffed a little laugh. He looked like a would-be vigilante. A Batman wannabe. Well, he’d always preferred Steve Rogers to Bruce Wayne. Maybe he’d update his look to be a bit more Captain America sometime. But for now, he had a mission.

He was going to find the piece of shit who had ruined his reputation, killed Ana, and was in the process of crumbling Overwatch from the inside, and he was going to take them out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the last chapter! Then an epilogue. Yay!
> 
> Comments? Guesses? Speculation? Concerns?


	12. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OOPS sorry I decided I needed one more chapter. See end notes for reasons!

# Chapter 11

Jack and Jesse rested with their backs to the wall, masks and visors on for both anonymity and night vision. Then again, maybe it would have been better to not see this, their deaths spelled out for them in the line of explosives wired together around the foundation of the OHQ.

They had been planning this infiltration of the Geneva Headquarters building for just shy of a month now, ever since Jack had tracked Jesse down from where he was drinking himself stupid in a bar in Mexico. They hadn't expected this, though.

Their reunion, some four months ago now, had not been a happy one. Not long after Ana’s death, Jack had sneaked into an abandoned Watch Point in Venezuela to try to dig up some information about who could have leaked Blackwatch to the press. He figured that the official investigation had focused almost exclusively on himself, so he did the opposite. What would the investigators have overlooked due to the confirmation bias coloring their hunt?

It had taken months to uncover the truth, but by the time he had tracked Jesse down in Dorado, he knew he was right.

_“McCree,” Jack growled, grabbing the cowboy by the back of his shirt and hauling him up from the bar._

_McCree looked up at him, gaze bleary and unfocused. “Morrison?” he slurred. Jack settled the bar tab and hauled Jesse away to wait for him to sober up. There would be no answers from a man so drunk._

_The more sober Jesse became, the more he looked terrified of Jack. “How did you figure it out?” he asked, slumped over with his head in his hands. He was perched on the edge of a hard, old mattress in the grungy motel room Jack had paid cash for. Jack himself sat in a chair positioned in front of the door (the only exit, fire codes be damned), pistol resting in his lap._

_“Process of elimination, Jesse,” he said. “I combed through the data that was actually leaked, and eventually you were the last possible answer. Nobody else had command codes for Blackwatch, ever. And no one else had been around long enough to know about some of the details that were leaked. It’s why I was so easy to frame, right?”_

_“I didn’t want them to frame you,” Jesse answered miserably. “I thought that I could make it look like a third party.”_

_“But… why?” Jack said, his anger abandoning him. This stupid kid, this **stupid** kid. “Why leak it at all?”_

_“Someone had to! Dammit, Jack. You really made an idealist out of me after all. I can’t believe you didn’t do something sooner! Blackwatch was wrong, the things we were doing… it had to stop, and you and Gabriel had your heads so far up your respective asses—”_

_This had prompted a great deal of shouting, accusations, and threats of violence, before the crux of the issue was exposed. “What?” Jesse said, his grip on Jack’s jacket slackening. “No, wait. You think I—Jack, I never gave details of missions to enemies. Whoever was leaking info about ops, that wasn’t me. I exposed Blackwatch, but I never endangered us or other agents on missions. I wouldn’t.”_

From there it hadn’t taken long to sort out that they both wanted the same thing: revenge for the deaths of Blackwatch agents that had resulted from someone on the inside selling them out over the years. Jesse had been the whistleblower on Blackwatch, and Jack wasn’t sure he was ready to forgive the young man for that, but forgiveness wasn’t the order of the day.

It wasn’t safe to return to the Venezuela Watch Point, Jack having tripped enough alarms at the abandoned base that Gabriel would be a fool not to have stationed a small army there in case he came back. So they found their way to Europe, under the radar, and began the slow, painful work of uncovering a conspiracy.

And what a conspiracy they had found.

A cancer had grown under their noses, spreading since the very inception of the UN-sanctioned Overwatch. Gabrielle Adawe, as it turned out, had not solicited Jack to be Overwatch Strike Commander because she thought he would be a better leader. She had done so because she had known he was weaker than Gabriel, less likely to catch on to her machinations. In the end, the wedge she had shoved between Jack and Gabe had been an effective enough distraction; with so much of their attention diverted for so long to their crumbling relationship, the two men had failed to notice Adawe's misconduct.

Whatever Adawe had been up to, when she had been kicked out of the UN, she had lost control over the growing body of double agents in Overwatch. As far as Jack and Jesse could tell, her motivation had been selfish, the small-minded scheming of a power-hungry bureaucrat. But she had overstepped, recruited too many idealists who weren’t motivated by money and promotions, and out of the skeleton of her corrupt network had grown something far worse. Talon.

Now, they were back in Geneva, where it had all started, trying to find their way into the building they had once been so proud to call their headquarters. Talon had something schemed for this very night here in Geneva, and while they had been unable to find the specifics of the plan, they had enough to know that this was their chance to get incontrovertible evidence that Talon existed and had been operating from inside OHQ for years.

Jack took off his visor, turned to face Jesse. “Son,” he said, voice gruff. “We don’t have enough time to stop this.”

“We can’t just let it happen,” Jesse said, eyes on the ugly little bombs stuck to the support beams with duct tape.

Jack grabbed his shoulders, shook him. “We don’t have time,” he said. “Even if we could disarm these, they surely have the whole building wired up. We could never get to them all on time. But we can try to get people out of here. You get to the med bay, tell Angela. She’ll start the evacuation.” Jesse’s eyes were wide, unsure. Jack shook him again. “Quietly, Jesse! If they know we’re on to them, they’ll blow the whole thing before we can get everyone out.”

Jesse swallowed hard, nodded. “Where are you going?”

“Gabriel,” he said. It was enough. The two men squared their shoulders, shook hands.

“It was an honor, Commander,” Jesse said.

Jack nodded. “One last time, Ranger,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? McCree! I like to think that he looked up to the moral codes of Jack and Gabe so much after coming from the gang life, that when Blackwatch broke those codes, he lost faith in both men and felt like it was time to take matters into his own hands. One of those, "you taught me how to be a better man, so I'm gonna be the better man here," moments. Even if it ended up making things worse, in a lot of ways.
> 
> I was going to make the backstory about Jesse way shorter but I like this better. So, one more content chapter, and then an epilogue. This time, I promise no surprise extra chapters. Next chapter is written, and it is most definitely the end besides the epilogue.
> 
> Comments? Thoughts?


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this has been written for forever, but then I wasn't happy with it and just sat on it and sat on it until now. Thanks to the best person in the world for reading and giving suggestions to improve!
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

# Chapter 12

Jack wasn’t even sure he’d find Gabriel in the building, since it was the middle of the night and Gabe had never made a habit of sleeping at the office. But he had to check. After all, if _he_ had been the one planning this attack, he would have found a way to tie the Strike Commander up at the office, perhaps flood him with urgent paperwork, or sabotage a currently ongoing mission so that he had to be in Command overseeing it.

He debated the elevator for a minute before discarding the idea—there were so many ways that could go wrong. So he started up the stairs, grateful for the SEP chemicals that kept him going when most ordinary people his age would have needed a break several flights ago.

Finally, he staggered into the hall of the floor that housed both Gabriel’s personal office and the Command Center. The office was closer, so he started there, skidding to a halt and banging on the door with the flat of his hand.

“Gabriel!” he yelled. “Open the door!” He stopped to listen, then started pounding on the door again. “Gabriel!”

The door slid open and Gabriel stood there gaping at him.

Jack was so relieved that he didn’t see the punch until it connected with his face. He staggered back, hands flying to protect his face from another blow that didn’t come.

“What the fuck!” he said, trying to regain his bearings.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Gabriel demanded, and Jack heard the distinctive click of the safety on a heavy pulse rifle.

He stood up slowly, hands up and away from his body to show he wasn’t going for a weapon. He had never replaced his visor and mask after taking them off to talk to Jesse in the basement, so it was with his bare eyes that he met Gabriel’s shocked, angry gaze.

“Gabe,” he started, voice placating and urgent. “We have—”

“You can’t just come here and start making demands, you asshole!” Gabe said, and Jack blinked, stepped back. He had misjudged; Gabe wasn’t angry, he was _furious_.

“Gabe, please—”

“Stop calling me that!” Gabriel yelled, pushing the rifle forward threateningly. Jack took another step back.

“Okay,” Jack said, hands still high. “Okay, I won’t. But please, listen to me.”

“Listen to you?” Gabe snarled. “I should just shoot you! You did this! You did this to _us_ , to Overwatch. And you’re just going to show up on my doorstep like nothing happened?”

“They’ve rigged the whole place with bombs, _please_ Gabriel—”

“Bombs? Jesus Christ, Jack, what are you on about now?” Gabriel lowered the rifle, rubbed at his forehead. “Bombs,” he muttered, shaking his head. “You’ve really gone off the deep end, you know that?”

“I saw them with my own goddamn eyes! McCree is helping Angela evac—”

“McCree?” Gabriel looked up, finally listening. “He’s here? Fuck Jack, did you drag him into your shit again?”

Jack growled in frustration. “McCree is the one who leaked Blackwatch, _Strike Commander_. If you hadn’t been so convinced it was me, you might have figured that out yourself! It wasn’t that hard. I put two and two together just from what I could find at the Venezuela Watch Point.”

“So that _was_ you.”

“Yeah, so you’re one for three on accusations,” Jack shot back. “Because I didn’t fucking leak Blackwatch, and I didn’t leak any ops to enemies.” He slumped down, suddenly exhausted. “I only ever wanted Overwatch to succeed, Gabe. I only ever wanted _us_ to succeed.”

Gabriel faltered, anger fading into something more uncertain. Jack watched, holding his breath as the Overwatch Strike Commander lowered his pulse rifle and rubbed at his forehead; Jack recognized the gesture to mean Gabriel was conflicted, debating. He opened his mouth to urge Gabriel again about the bombs, then snapped it shut. This couldn’t be rushed. Gabe was stubborn to a fault, and Jack pushing would only make things worse. He vibrated with nervous energy, fearing the inevitable explosion of the bombs, not daring to force Gabriel’s hand.

At last, Gabriel looked up, regarding Jack squarely. “I don’t know how to trust you,” he said.

Hope flickered to life in Jack’s chest. He stood up straighter, took a few steps toward Gabriel. The gun stayed pointed to the ground. The flicker of hope flared.

“Yes, you do. We always trusted each other. Please, Gabriel, give me that again. Give me a chance, just long enough for us to get to safety. I’ll swear on anything, on the memory of my father, anything. The building is coming down and we’re going to die if we don’t leave now.”

Slowly, Gabe nodded. Jack let out a gasping sigh of relief, and grabbed Gabriel’s hand without thinking, tugging him toward the stairs. “There’s no time, come _on!_ ”

Gabriel withdrew his hand, but stayed close on Jack’s heels as they rushed down the stairs. As they started the long run down to the ground, Gabriel asked, “Who exactly has the place rigged to blow?”

“A group called Talon. They’re the ones who leaked all the ops over the years. Ana’s, too.”

They started jumping over the guard rails. It was hard on the knees, but what was the point of being a super soldier if you didn’t jump down some flights of stairs sometimes?

“Talon?” Gabe repeated. They were only six floors up now, so close. They were going to make it.

“It’s a long story,” Jack said, hurdling the rails again. “Grew out of the dregs of Adawe’s bullshit.”

Fourth floor. Hurdle some stairs. Third floor.

“Adawe?” Gabriel demanded. “She was—”

The building collapsed around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :O
> 
> Epilogue soon!


	14. Epilogue

# Epilogue

Gabriel stood next to the grave, unconsciously rubbing at his stiff shoulder as he stared down at the tombstone. It was too small, too underwhelming for the person buried beneath it, whose body he had personally seen put into the ground years ago, whose absence he still sorely felt.

“It shouldn’t have ended this way,” he told his long departed loved one. “It was always us against the world, you know? What happened?”

The gravestone gave no answers.

He let go of his shoulder and grimaced at the tremor in his hand. It had started after the bombing. Nerve damage or something, Gabriel had barely paid attention to the doctors when they had explained it and didn’t care enough to ask for clarification. It didn’t matter why, it mattered what it meant, and it meant that he would never wield a pulse rifle again. He had switched to shotguns, where aim mattered less at close range.

He looked to the left, where another, newer grave was.

“Maybe if you had made it,” he said to that grave, “it would have turned out different.”

But there was no replacing Angela Ziegler. The row that stretched out next to her was Gabriel’s own personal hell. Grave after grave of his friends and loved ones.

Reinhardt, who had injured himself gravely while attempting to rescue people from the flaming remains of OHQ, died from complications during surgery not even a week after the bombing. Angela, who had been moving patients through the teleporter from the med bay on the second floor when the roof collapsed on her. Jesse, who had been helping Angela.

He looked back to the grave in front of him. “You would have been proud, Ana,” he told his friend. “Between Rein, Angela, and McCree, so many were saved.”

A warm hand slipped into his, steadying the tremor against its broad palm. Gabriel laid his head down on Jack’s shoulder, feeling the stiff leather of his new jacket under his cheek.

“I should never have agreed to be their leader, Jack,” he said quietly, wishing harder than ever that he could have tea with Ana and ask for her wise guidance, or see Mercy about the pain in his shoulder, or take McCree to the shooting range for a friendly competition, or laugh as Reinhardt challenged the new recruits to arm wrestling matches in the cafeteria. “Death follows me.”

“We fucked up,” Jack agreed, somber. “We had a chance to do something really good, Gabe. What happened?”

Gabriel shook his head. “It should have been you. Adawe thought you would have been easier to manipulate, but you could have done better.”

“No,” Jack sighed, and Gabriel finally looked up at him, unable to stop the sympathetic wince at the sight of his lover’s face covered in the harsh metal mask and red visor. Jack’s eyes had been irrevocably damaged; without the visor to filter and sharpen visual input, he could barely even make out shapes and colors. “I don’t think it would have ended any better for me.”

Jack pulled a rumpled picture out of his pocket, smoothed it over his chest, then laid it next to Ana’s headstone. Three young faces looked up at them, each as unfamiliar as it was utterly known. Gabriel turned away, unable to look at the photograph of younger, more optimistic days. The Gabriel in that photo was as dead as the Ana in it, and Golden Boy Jack was a distant memory compared to the cyborg standing beside him.

Jack looked at the photo a moment longer, having always been the nostalgic one of the two, then turned to follow Gabriel.

Because of the number on his new jacket, the mask and visor, and the mechanical legs, Gabe had started to call Jack “Cyborg:76.” In return, Jack called Gabe “Grim,” an homage to his attitude about his ruined body, as well as his refusal to wear anything but mourning black.

It was the ninth anniversary of the bombing at OHQ, so they had come to pay their respects to the dead, as they had every year. But the war wasn’t over. Talon was still a plague to peace, and so long as it existed, they had a job to do. A mission.

Maybe Jack was right. Maybe this was how it would have ended either way. Adawe’s seeds grown to fruition, Overwatch in tatters, disgraced and shamed.

“Come on, old man,” Gabriel huffed to Jack. “There’s work to be done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A swap. A different kind of loss.
> 
> Thanks @SoulStealer1987 for the idea for "Cyborg:76"! I loved it right away and decided to roll with it. Then added "Grim" (hehe grim reaper). I thought of some other ideas for Gabe's new name, like Necrosis or Ruin, but everything just sounds soooo dramatic (fits him, I guess).
> 
> Thoughts? Comments? Ideas about other ways this path could have gone?
> 
> I'm considering making this a "series" and having a collection of different endings or ways things could have changed along the way. Interest? Suggestions?
> 
> Thanks for reading! Since I'm on a "GIVE ME ALL THE FLUFF" kick, maybe I'll write some fluffy AU to satisfy my need for happy Gabe and Jack. Ideas welcome.
> 
> Cheers!


End file.
